Honorary Associates of Rationalist International

Sir Hermann Bondi (UK)

(1919 – 2005)

Sir Hermann Bondi, British mathematician and cosmologist with worldwide reputation, was the President of the Rationalist Press Association of United Kingdom.

Born in Vienna in 1919, Hermann Bondi lived and studied in Austria under the shadow of fascism. In 1942, he joined Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research fellow and received his M.A. During World War II he worked in the British Admiralty. After the War he taught mathematics at Cambridge and King's College. He served as master of Churchill College, Cambridge, from 1983.

Hermann Bondi combined his academic career with public service as science's ambassador to government. He was director general of the European Space Research Organization and chief scientific adviser to the British ministry of defense. Since 1980 he is the chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council.

In 1948 Bondi formulated together with Hoyle and Gold the cosmological theory of a steady-state universe, which postulates that the universe is the same everywhere and for all time. This means that as the universe expands, new matter would have to be created to balance this expansion.

Works by Bondi include Cosmology (1952; reissued 1960),
The Universe at Large (1960),
Relativity and Commonsense (1964), and
Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory (1967).
He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1959 and a Knight Commander of the Bath in 1973.